if they could see you now
by i set my sims on fire
Summary: And you wonder why everyone expects you to help her, when you can't even help yourself - Lily/Teddy.


**Warning: bad language and mentions of drug use.**

if they could see you now

Muggle London. Three am. Dark streets and darker skies, starless from the blur of the street lights. An alley way, why the fuck are you in an alley way? But you are, and oh, she's bleeding. Why is she bleeding? A small-sized cut on her cheek, blown pupils, she has, and smudged mascara, and she's laughing.

'Lily,' you say. 'You're bleeding.'

And she says, 'shut up and kiss me, Lupin,' and you do, and when you finally manage to bring her back to your flat, her blood has rubbed off onto your own skin.

She passes out on the sofa in under ten minutes.

x

It was never ever ever like this with Victoire, you think, after you've both woken up and she's lying across the rug your grandmother gave you, lying on her back with her fingers splayed out around her, tapping the wooden floor impatiently and smoke woven in ribbons from the tip of the lit cigarette.

You watch her and rake fingers through matted blue hair, and perhaps you should feel guilty but you don't, you don't.

'I don't want to go home,' Lily says plainly from the floor. She is nineteen and she lives with her parents, they don't trust her to go elsewhere and she can't keep a job.

'Stay here, then,' are words you shouldn't say but they slip out of your mouth regardless, and when Lily agrees, you feel a splurge of happiness in amongst the lonely.

You tell yourself that you'll feel guilty later, but later Lily is pressing her lips to yours again and you forget.

x

Thirty. Thirty years old. You still have a discarded birthday card from Harry and Ginny and James and Albus and, oh, Lily too, perched on lonesomely on a dirty counter in the corner of your small kitchen. A giant blue 3 and a bigger red 0 scream at you from the front, painstakingly obvious, and not allowing you to forget, ever.

Thirty. You are meant to have a wife and a job and maybe a couple of kids, by now. A good job. A solid income. A pretty home in the country with space for children to run around and laughter to stream into the air like ribbons of smoke.

You're thirty, but you're stuck in a job you hate in a shop you don't care about with a co-worker who hates your guts, and you've a sneaking suspicion the boss only keeps you there for your surname, Lupin, and your God-father, Harry Potter. It's a shitty little store on Diagon Alley no one visits, the pay is shit, your flat is shitter, in the crappiest part of muggle London. Creaking floorboards, damp on the ceilings. Mould on the bathroom wall. You learn to ignore it.

And- wife? No, no, no. You have Lily and what even is she? You look after her when she's drunk or high, and occasionally she cries into your chest. You fuck her, sometimes, and you tell her you love her. If she's on something particularly strong, she'll tell you she loves you, too, but she's lying. She's Harry's daughter, he asked you to help her. You're not doing a very good job, but whatever.

You had Victoire Weasley, once, keeping up with the best friend cliché and her school-girl crush that could have been so much more. She wanted to marry you, she wanted a diamond ring on her finger, didn't care that you were living in the gutter, but it's too late now.

Kids could've been part of the picture, too. Metamorphagus and Veela blood. The Lupin name, but a Weasley at heart. Big blue eyes, chameleon hair, something you'd have learned to love, but you didn't.

x

Harry and Ginny Potter, out of their minds with worry, when they arrive at your house in the middle of the night, is Lily here, they ask?

You lie through your teeth- better Lily be missing than splayed naked across your mattress. You're drunk and they can tell that and they leave, and you promise to find Lily in the morning. Ginny's eyes are downcast, and Harry looks like there's something he wants to say to you but he doesn't.

And in the morning, you send Lily right home, and she glares at you, a look like daggers and knives and you respond with a weary smile. And then you collapse on the sofa and pretend you have some sort of direction in your life.

_VICTOIRE WEASLEY PREGNANT AGAIN_, Witch Weekly screams at you, when you turn up at work ten minutes late to the shop that sells second-hand schoolbooks and robes, and your colleague has left her magazines dotted around the checkout.

You would have expected yourself to feel something, feel some sort of pain, but you don't. You're happy for Vic, you suppose, she always deserve better. But you feel no strong emotions, you don't really feel anything, apart from the urge to get high or something, or hold Lily Potter in your arms. Victoire is doing better than you, but when was she not? A second kid on the way, married- you doubt there's much love, as it all happened in the space of four years, but really, what would you know?

x

A joint poised in your hand, rolling between your fingers, unlit. Lily sits next to you. You're slumped on the floor of your kitchen, the rough wood of the kitchen units digging into your spines. Lily's thumb skids across the lighter and a flame- burning amber, orange, gold, ignites, and she lights the green before passing it to you. You light your own, a haze filling you as you inhale, exhale the smoke, easier than breathing.

Muggle drugs are bad, say the wizarding healers, the press, the stuffy Hogwarts professors over ten years ago, even worse than illegal potions passed around at parties, because no healers at St Mungo's know the effects of coke, pot, smack, which makes it a lot more dangerous than blue, red, green.

But you like it, you do. You found it one night, when you disappeared into the muggle world for a few months. Lily found it, too, though on a separate occasion, and you tried to make her stop but she wouldn't, and if you can't beat them, join them, right?

You and Lily talk, aimlessly, as you smoke. Not anything deep, nor too shallow. You just talk, you relax. You feel _good._

And you wonder- why is everyone expecting you to save Lily? To fix her, when you're just as broken yourself? You can't save Lily. You know that. And it doesn't matter if she trusts you, or if you make her smile, or if you used to baby sit her when she was six years old. That was another time; another you, and another her, and now things and times have changed, and instead of reaching out to stop Lily from falling, you hold her hand and brace yourself, as the two of you fall down together.

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